#these two were one of my favorite new discoveries of 2018

[dj-of-the-coven]

Thanks for asking @vivi-mire and @goldensunset! To answer your questions, I'll preface this by saying I don't actively seek out character playlists that often, but I like making them. Unfortunately this leads me down some dismal fucking roads while looking for other people's thoughts on the subject.

Possibly to the surprise of some, offline I am known mostly for 2 things: anarchy and music. Music is my life. I have one million other hobbies, and in online spaces I mostly talk about video games, but my true essence is music--particularly rock and punk. My collection spans over several mediums. I have a 2018 Victrola record player that I've repaired by hand, a 2004 CD-radio player, a 2021 cassette-CD-radio player, and a 2007 Insignia MP3 player. Most people around my age ditched CD players by the time they were in high school (no judgement there), but I used mine this morning. I have two books in my bag on cassettes right now. I play two string instruments and have considered picking up a third! I don't say any of this to brag--it's just what I choose to do with my time and money, same as anybody else. The reason why I bring it up is to emphasize that I both know and care a lot about this particular subject. And let me tell you. What I feel when I see the same 6 artists over and over again in every character playlist is not simple haterism... it's pity with a dose of concern.

What bothers me more than the music being ill-fitting for some fictional character is the tangible evidence that most people do not have the means to discover new artists; also, to some degree, the foreboding conclusion that we are losing a diversity of taste. There used to be magazines and independent radio shows, local performances, older kids in the neighborhood you could talk to to find new bands, but the rise of streaming as the primary distribution method has severely limited the ways through which interested parties can discover music. Ask someone you know how they discovered their favorite artists--for real!! Most of the time, they'll answer, TikTok, Youtube, or Spotify. Algorithms. Mathematical processes designed to funnel people into profitable avenues of advertising. These are the things determining the music taste of today's listeners, and it's powerful fucking stuff, to the point that even radio stations have been affected by the algorithms of these unrelated websites. When I was living in Los Angeles, I had to watch the station 106.7 KROQ slowly go from playing 90s grunge and nu metal to running the Arcane theme song by Imagine Dragons 27 times daily, because it was being played to market the show. Everything is morphing into profit sludge! An equation on somebody's computer somewhere determined that this specific pool of artists would be able to turn a bunch of queer 16-24 year olds into a marketable demographic, and thus Tumblr is overrun by the same 8 or so bands in every poll, every uquiz, every embedded spotify playlist. You guys ever heard of Hozier? I've been listening to a rad new artist lately, yeah! It's Cavetown. You should listen to Mitski! Did you hear about Mitski? I think you should listen to Mitski. What about Mitski guys. What about Mitski.

Again, it really doesn't have anything to do with the quality of any of these artists (except for Imagine Dragons, which I'll never hesitate to shit on). I just think it's... odd, and upsetting, that so many people are trapped inside this tiny little bubble of music that has been algorithmically determined for them as the genre they can be arbitrarily sorted into for marketing appeal reasons. It's like hearing someone say they've never seen it rain before. I discovered many of my current favorite artists by browsing through secondhand stores, talking to older punks in my community, renting CDs from the library, reading magazines (I recommend Razorcake), and going to local $5 cover shows held in the basement of a record shop. It physically pains me that this method of discovery is dying. It hurts to think of how few people are engaging seriously with the music scene in the places they live. It devastates me to see so many people being restricted by their circumstances from finding the music that will speak to them, specifically, not every single young, white, very online gay person living in the United States.

Basically--this is not okay. Something has to change.

[disappearinginq]

5, 7, 13, and 20 for fanfic asks?

5. Fic most proud of writing This is a toss up - because I am one of those people who likes their own stuff a lot. :-D But, one of the Big Three: Damnatio Memoriae from the Lucifer fandom, Running Up That Hill for Agenst of SHIELD, and Wrong Side of Heaven for Magnum 2018. Mostly for different reasons, but they all have the same vein of "I got mad at canon and I fixed it".

Lucifer was a roller coaster for me - I loved season 1, season 2 was okay, 3 made me want to throw something at the screen 90% of the time, season 4 WAS EPIC, and I gave up halfway through season 5 and never finished the series. Damnatio was written because I wanted much more involvement of the supernatural, not just a therapy/self discovery mixed in with crime of the week. Also, being raised adjacent to Catholicism, I was getting really irritated that they weren't even using the comic lore, and missing the basic fundamentals of the sources they were pulling from. This story had a lot of reader feedback, to the point of it being almost choose your own adventure. As it went on, I would ask readers to pick from two options that I had rolling around in my head, and it actually worked really well to keep the ball moving with my writing.

Running Up That Hill was again another one where I just got mad at canon, but because I don't like the narrative of "these people are exempt from moral standards while this person is Wrong No Matter What", and I probably would've let it slide except the issue I had was that the one that Wrong No Matter What had all of his life changing trauma as a child and then had it reinforced his entire adult life. Everyone else was an adult when Bad Things happened, and I don't like the hypocrisy of saying "get over it" to someone who legitimately doesn't have the toolset to do that.

Wrong Side I love because this actually was my first foray into something that had no supernatural elements to it whatsoever, and based firmly in reality, and a reality I knew pretty well. I wasn't a huge fan of how the TV show just glossed over the fact that these guys were POW's for a year and a half of a terrorist organization that tortures and kills people with such violence that they became a whole new subsect of terrorism. Like, no, these guys aren't just going to walk away without an issue. And the fact that they were sold out by someone who said to have loved them? AND THEY HAVE NO FALL OUT FROM THIS?! Get fucked, shitty narrative. Suicide in the veteran community is at a high not seen since post-WWII, and these fuckers have the audacity to suggest that you're just being a little bitch if you can't acclimate to civilian life.

7. Favorite ship to write Well, that's pretty easy - none. Romance is rarely done well, and I have never liked anyone enough to relate to the narrative of "Well, I'm throwing all of my friendships out the window because now I have a RomAnTic InTereSt" and it irritates me to no end. if anything, my favorite ship is between Captain Kirk and the Enterprise.

13. Latest fic written/last WIP? A fix it fic for Yellowstone that showcases the brothers Kayce and Jamie, and because I am on a western kick, research for a Magnificent Seven fic that will likely never see the light of day, but I still love the show and the characters, where Ezra (the gambler from Georgia) is a spy for the Union during the Civil War.

20. Hardest Character to write/get the characterization right for? The female characters written by men. And I realize that sounds really weird, but because I swear to god men don't understand being a woman, they're just shit at writing them, and they say/do the dumbest things because guys would do that shit, or, worse, the guys writing the character are using them as hyperboles for women they think did them wrong. And then because the writers don't understand them, I can't understand them, and they wind up being the people that in real life, I'd want to hit with my car. Beth Dutton is a great example of this - some of the things she says that I know are supposed to come off as "strong, powerful woman" make me physically recoil and hide my face with a pillow while watching because What the fuck nobody would ever say that and it's actually cringeworthy. Until women started getting involved in the writing process for Magnum and Lenkov was fired, I absolutely wanted to stab Higgins in 90% of her scenes. Post Lenkov - I actually found her really sweet sometimes, and actually relatable.

That being said, the other ones that I'm not good at because it is so far outside my sphere of comprehension are characters like Angie or Dani off of Will Trent and Prodigal Son. I love those characters, they are complex and unique and I love them, but I don't have relatable experience to them at all, and they are some of the hardest people I have tried to write (which is why I don't have fic in those fandoms even though I love them).

[superfan44]

The 100 Favorite Movies Challege

As a huge movie buff, I thought I'd try something fun on here. I have decided to launch a new internet challenge: "The 100 Favorite Movies Challenge". The rules are pretty simple and straight forward. You create a list of 100 of your personal favorite movies in alphabetical order, post the list on your home page, then nominate other people/users of your choosing to do the challenge.

There is no limit to what movies can be included on your list. Films within any medium (live action or animated), genre, and decade are more than welcome. Whether it's longtime favorites you were introduced to when you were younger, favorites that you've picked up over the years, or recent discoveries or releases that quickly became your favorites, anything and everything is on the table here.

I'll start off by sharing my list. To be clear, I have way more than 100 favorite movies, but to have the number be anything past that may be a bit much for some people. Please don't judge me if it seems like there might be a few noteworthy titles missing on here. I mainly put this list together just for fun. Alright, here we go!

9 (2009)

Airplane! (1980)

American Graffiti (1973)

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

The Avengers (2012)

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Baby Driver (2017)

Batman Begins (2005)

Beetlejuice (1988)

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Big Hero 6 (2014)

Black Dynamite (2009)

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Castle in the Sky (1986)

Chicago (2002)

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (Knockin' on Heaven's Door) (2001)

Deadpool (2016)

Death Proof (2007)

Desperado (1994)

Die Hard (1988)

Django Unchained (2012)

Double Indemnity (1944)

Dragon Inn (1967)

Fantasia 2000 (2000)

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Flash Gordon (1980)

Ghostbusters (1984)

The Godfather (1972)

Goodfellas (1990)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

History of the World, Part 1 (1980)

Hot Fuzz (2007)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

The Incredibles (2004)

Independence Day (1996)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

The Italian Job (2003)

Jaws (1975)

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Logan (2017)

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro (1980)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Meatballs (1979)

Men in Black (1997)

Moana (2016)

Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)

Network (1976)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

North by Northwest (1959)

Notorious (1946)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Porco Rosso (1992)

Princess Mononoke (1997)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Ready Player One (2018)

Rear Window (1954)

Rio Bravo (1959)

Robin Hood (1973)

The Rocketeer (1991)

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Scream (1996)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Skyfall (2012)

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

Spaceballs (1987)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Spirited Away (2001)

Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Surf's Up (2007)

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Tombstone (1993)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Treasure Planet (2002)

Tremors (1990)

Tron: Legacy (2010)

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

The Wind Rises (2013)

Wonder Woman (2017)

Yojimbo (1961)

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Zombieland (2009)

Now, before I wrap things up, I would like to nominate @skygent, @is0gild , @firecraker-j, @mrcowboytoyou, and @piglets-not-so-big-adventure to do this challenge. Hopefully we can get the ball rolling so more and more people can join in. I look forward to seeing what kind of lists you guys will put together. Good luck!

[yungvenuz]

Game of the Year: 2022 Edition

How do I do readmores, again? I haven’t used tumblr in ages.

Oh yeah:

10. Jabroni Brawl Episode 3

Jabroni Brawl Episode 3 is something I've been missing lately: a PvP shooter with absolutely no emphasis on (or seemingly any interest in) balance. Most game modes spawn players in with totally random weapons, letting some people run rampant with instant kill rocket launchers and black hole trip mines while other people are stuck with the gun that makes you fart (which can also instantly kill players, because this is that sort of game). I can't overstate how nice it is to have a pvp game to play with no ranking leaderboard to climb and no marginally improved weapons or cosmetics to grind. The goal is to have fun, and Jabroni Brawl Episode 3′s fun is in its pure chaos.

9. Bean and Nothingness

Bean and Nothingness is a 2019 puzzle game. You have a wand that can be used to zap beans on the ground, and if the beans match one of the recipes in the book you carry with you, a monster is created. Different monsters have vastly different properties: some charge and attack, some explode, some carry, some freeze, some grab, and so on.

When one monster recipe is present in a puzzle, the rules are fairly straightforward. When two, or three, or more are present, the number of mechanical interactions that must be kept in mind quickly grow dizzyingly complex. What happens when a grabber monster grabs a bomb monster? what happens when the bomb monster grabbed by a grabber monster is frozen by a freezy monster before the grabber can finish pulling it in? It's up to you to experiment and find out.

This emphasis on experimentation is what I think sets Bean and Nothingness apart from other puzzle games. The game states explicitly early on that it won't hold your hand through every relevant interaction every monster has. And while games like Stephen's Sausage Roll or Patrick's Parabox depend on discovery of puzzle mechanics that intuitively derive from the world and physics they exist in, Bean and Nothingness is deliberately unintuitive by virtue of all its points of interaction being fanciful imaginary monsters. This makes every new monster discovered in the game a fresh slate from which to build a brand new foundation of knowledge.

8. Boneraiser Minions

Boneraiser Minions is an entry in the very rapidly expanding "Vampire Survivors-like", or "Bullet Heaven" genre, and it's my favorite of the bunch. Instead of wielding weapons yourself, you play as a necromancer who raises various skeletal or demonic peons to do your screen clearing for you, with the usual rapid scaling up to ridiculous hordes of undead smashing everything in a mile radius that the genre is known for.

I'll admit I'm not a huge fan of the bullet heaven genre, but I'm including this entry here anyway because I'm pleased to no end to see Caiysware, the developer of Boneraiser Minions, finally starting to get his due. I've been following their work since 2018's Skelly Selest, and I was immediately charmed by the gothic horror pixel art, inventive design, and deliberately incorrect ye-olde english. Boneraiser is by far their most popular game to date, and I'm hoping that success will carry through to future titles.

7. Elden Ring

My only sop to AAA gaming in this year's list comes from the only place it could have. It's fun, it's beautiful, it's challenging in just the right way.

I do wish it had more plot. I enjoyed the plotlines that had character interactions (volcano manor, Radahn festival), but they were few and far between, and I don't particularly like Fromsoft's archeological approach to worldbuilding. My jaw did genuinely drop as I took the mistwood elevator into the depths and saw just how much more there would be to do, though, so on the list it goes.

6. Streets of Rogue

My favorite roguelike experiences all have to do with moments of cascading failure. Things like running face first into a hydra, so you try to teleport away, but you land on three gelatinous cubes, so you cast a spell of mass confusion, but the confusion affects a nearby wyvern and the wyvern shoots a blast of fire which causes the gelatinous cubes to explode and blows away all your cover and what started as routine dungeon exploration has turned into quaffing every unidentified potion in your inventory on the distant off-chance that one of them is secretly a Potion of Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here Please. That sort of thing.

Streets of Rogue is the first game I've played to bundle that experience into co-op multiplayer. Each player picks a class with unique skillsets and bonus missions on each floor of the game's campaign, and then you're all cut loose to wreak havoc. The end result is extremely chaotic and extremely fun. I didn't even play that much of Streets of Rogue this year, but what I did stood out among the rest of the multiplayer games I've played with friends this year.

PS: Insanely good soundtrack.

5. Tactical Nexus

After two years of completely rewiring my mental state, Tactical Nexus has finally loosened its grip on me enough to let me focus on other games when I want to. It's still my first pick for game to play while listening to podcasts, but I'm only playing one or two hours of it a day instead of four or five.

This year saw a flurry of major updates, including the release of the much anticipated Legacy and Magic systems. These systems provide oblique benefits that allow the completion of the simultaneously released Mystic Gate, which soups up existing towers to much higher level difficulties (and much higher potential score rewards). The game's already nigh infinite replayability has now been brought to an exponentially more complex level, with block tunneling, teleportation gates, and temporary stat boosts changing the calculus for completing levels that were once thought completely solved. I may only have about half the sunstones (score-based permanent resource) of the best players of Tactical Nexus, but I'm still enjoying trying to solve its mysteries each time a new stage is released.

4. Last Call BBS

An anthology collection of games created for a fictional computer operating system by the legendary puzzle game designer Zachtronics. It's no wonder to me that his intended retirement from videogame development didn't stick, because he was clearly having too much fun with it.

20th Century Food Court was my personal favorite as a more traditional programming optimization game, but i also particularly enjoyed Dungeons and Diagrams, a sudoku-like with lots of tricky rules for solving puzzles, and The Forbidden Path, which was even less scrutable than most of Zachtronics' work.

My favorite thing about Last Call BBS is the layers of verisimilitude present in 20th Century Food Court. You play the game through the interface of a fictional old computer operating system similar to a macintosh (layer 1). 20th Century Food Court is a factory programming game about a utopian far flung future society (layer 2) that's attempting to build authentic recreations of 20th century mall food based on their fuzzy memories (layer 3). The layers all slot together perfectly somehow, and the end result is really funny anachronisms, like the burger and fries combo meal that ends up being a fairly accurate burger along with a single giant fry in a cup, or the customers all being annoyed by the coffee and cigarettes chain because the cigarettes aren't pleasant to eat.

3. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

I could cite a lot of reasons for putting Great Ace Attorney here, like the writing, or the characters, or the chemistry between the characters, or the lateral thinking needed to solve some of the cases, or the themes, or the humor, which are all excellent. The actual reason it's going to live on in my memory is simple: Barok van Zieks is easily one of the hottest characters in video game history.

2. Last Command

Last Command is a shmup with aesthetic and thematic inspirations from Undertale and Nier Automata, about a society of robots that have long outlasted humanity but still labor under their "last commands", the objectives programmed into them with their creation.

The story is pretty good, but what puts this game on the list is its shmup design, which is fantastic. Last Command is self described as a "Bullet Hell x Snake" game. The bullet hell part is self explanatory: bosses send waves of bullets over the screen that need to be dodged. The snake elements are much more intriguing, in two ways:

1) your character moves on Snake rules with a segmented tail, which means constant orthogonal movement and a variable hitbox. 2) defeating bosses requires picking up ammunition pellets in the form of data files, which further increases the size of your hitbox and requires you to be constantly moving around the screen to actually progress fights.

These two details add a huge amount of nuance to the usual bullet hell dynamic, making patterns that would be fairly simple to dodge under typical bullet hell rules much more interesting.

The boss fights are incredibly well designed, too. Each boss includes a large number of phases (always at least five but usually ten or more) that steadily expand on one or a few specific design themes. The difficulty ramps up satisfyingly, not just inside bosses as new elements are introduced to the fights, but between fights as the game is progressed. The overall experience is really, really fun and intense.

1. Crystal Project

Crystal Project is a job-based team rpg similar to Final Fantasy 3, set in a minecrafty world with extremely open-ended exploration and evolving movement upgrades similar to a metroidvania.

I love everything about this game. Exploring it is just so satisfying, with every nook or cranny you could possibly think to check having something interesting to find. There's piles of secret items, bosses, and quests to find, and even some sequence breaks that can change the order of your progression through the game if you're clever enough.

Environments are highly vertical to take full advantage of the isometric camera, and they look great despite being so blocky. There's a genuine sense of accomplishment to making it to the top of mountain cliffs or across icy ravines that's amplified as you unlock new mounts to explore with. In the end stages of the game, you get to fly directly over

You have a team of four characters for combat, with access to a list of combat jobs that expands as the game progresses, which can be swapped at any time. Only two jobs can be equipped at a time, which allows for inventive synergies without completely breaking the games balance, and each boss has different powers which necessitate different job combos to address properly.

I even found the story and writing charming, even though it definitely wasn't the primary focus. the primary theme of the game is the question of how exactly an adventure is supposed to be appreciated, and the various answers provided by characters throughout are interesting. There's a scene between two supporting characters in the rafters high above a partially constructed city that I found particularly touching.

It's difficult to believe that this is a solo development project, but the vast effort Andrew put into Crystal Project shows. I think everyone should play this game.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week #132 (Year 3/Week 28):

Another serendipitous discovery, The blue sky maiden by Japanese New Wave director Yasuzo Masumura. He is considered by some to be "the most important filmmaker in the history of postwar Japanese cinema", still I never heard of him before.

Yuko Ono, a lovely country girl, travels to Tokyo to find her mother, and is being reminded to always look for 'the bright blue sky’ above. An utterly modern and unorthodox adventure story, full of impromptu and unusual touches. An underrated gem. I am going to start exploring some of his 58 feature films! Recommended!

(Photo Above).

🍿

2 Iranian classics:

🍿 A moment of innocence, my first by celebrated director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. A textually complicated semi-autobiographical reenactment of an incident from his own life. As a teenager, he had stabbed a policeman at a protest rally and for that he was jailed for 5 years. Fragmented, multi-layered and enigmatic meta-film about making the movie he wanted to make. The trailer.

🍿 “Today I learned” about 'Persian Sylvia Plath', the influential and controversial poet Forugh Farrokhzad. She was a modernist feminist and iconoclast who broke barriers of sex and society and who died in 1967 at the age of 32.

She only directed one short film, The house is black, and in 1963 it paved the wave for the "Iranian New Wave". It's a harrowing, relentless documentary shot at the real-life Bababaghi leper colony, and it combines 'Ugliness' and 'Suffering' with 'Gratitude', like no other film I've ever seen. (Alain Resnais's Night and fog' notwithstanding). Powerful and very disturbing, you'll be better off for seeing it. 10/10.

During the 12 days of shooting, she became attached to a boy from the colony, and later adopted him.

A Paris Review exploration of Forough Farrokhzad.

🍿

La Collectionneuse, my 9th beautiful film by Éric Rohmer, the 3rd of his 'Six moral tales'.

On the one hand, there's the sensuous, lazy vacation at a rented summer villa near St Tropez, generously shot by Néstor Almendros in his first feature - there's nothing better on film than that. On the other hand, there are the two young, 'Hip' males who just can't get over an even younger free-spirit girl who hangs around the house, and who sleeps around without paying attention to what they, or anybody else, think. So they ruminate and philosophize and moralize and try to rationalize their piggish sexism and lust for her. They derogatorily nickname her 'The Collector' (of man) - What an outrage! 7/10.

🍿

2 by independent director Andrew Bujalski:

🍿 Computer Chess took me by complete surprise: It started as a grainy 1980 documentary about The American Computer Chess Convention, where two dozen nerdy enthusiasts gather to pit their programs against other computer chess programs and human players in a tournament for a grand prize of $7500. But something did not add up. There were odd moments and quirky idiosyncrasies creeping up. Cats meowing in the corridors, a human potential meet-up next door, middle age swingers... Only halfway though it dawned on me: This is not a found-footage documentary! It's an innovative weirdness, the best "Mumblecore" exercise I ever saw. The eccentric mannerism of the geeky dweebs and awkward geniuses was pitch-perfect. 8/10.

🍿 Support the Girls belongs to Regina Hall, who plays a general manager of a local Hooters-style restaurant bar. It's a realistic story of real people, low-income, hard-working, no special talents, with no glitz or special hooks. It was one of Obama's favorite movies of 2018.

🍿

'Computer Chess' overlaps with Mike Judge's hilarious HBO show Silicon Valley. Watching the first season again with zero lossless compression and still with a Weissman Score or 5.2. Pitch-perfect 6 morsels of 29 incredible minutes each. 9/10.

🍿

Adam's Rib, (Only my second by George Cukor, after 'Gaslight') and one of the 9 movies that fascinating barefoot superstar Katharine Hepburn made with her real-life lover Spencer Tracy. A sweet tale about a married couple, who are both lawyers, and have to face each other in court. Hepburn was one of the most independent celebrities of the old Hollywood, and here she plays the same fully actualized feminist: She drives their car, they cook together (she does the roast, he tosses the salad), and he cries when she rejects him. She also wins the 'Battle of the sexes'. Hurray! 8/10.

🍿

The wave is an interesting German thriller that was based on Ron Jones' social movement 'The Third 'Wave'. Like the 1967 California school experiment, a German high-school teacher must teach his bored class about 'Autocracy' (even though he's an anarchist). He decides to demonstrate to the students how easy it is to be manipulated when you belong to a group. Indeed in the course of only one week, he's able to transform his unruly, individualistic and rebellious pupils into a conformist fascist group that will go to any length to protect their newly-found 'community'. Prescient and though-provoking.

🍿

First watch: Kind Hearts and Coronets, the transgressive black comedy about a cynical serial killer who is getting away with his crime. All of his 8 victims were played by Alec Guinness.

🍿

3 re-watches, 2 with Robert De Nero:

🍿 "... Got a smoke?... " John Carpenter’s exhilarating breakthrough low-low budget B-movie Assault on Precinct 13, made on a shoestring. A riff on Rio Bravo and the ultimate urban western.

Were there any other and/or better Directors-Composers (Chaplin probably, but not Clint Eastwood) than Carpenter? The menacing synthesizer score he wrote was the most distinct feature of this banger. And the deserted locations of Watts, California looked exactly the same three decades later in godforsaken shitholes like Colton and San Bernardino. 8/10.

🍿 “Now back to Gene Krupa’s syncopated style shortly…”

Taxi Driver, one of the greatest movies ever made, a seductive manifesto of 'God’s lonely man'. The very best movie of the week, again.

Bernard Herrmann's masterful last film score (completed hours before his death) prompted me 5 years ago to compose a thread on Metafilter about the best movie scores. It included such evergreens as Chinatown soundtrack, Miles Davis for Louis Malle's 1958 Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, Morricone's Cinema Paradiso, Trent Reznor for The Social Network, Ryuichi Sakamoto's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Hans Zimmer's You're so cool from True Romance, and so many others.

🍿 There are only 3 Tarantino movies I care for, 'True Romance' (his best IMO), 'Pulp Fiction' (A masterpiece!) and Jackie Brown. A terrific attraction-romance between two adult leads, and with De Nero cast against type as a clumsy, inarticulate loser. Like he resurrected Travolta's career with 'Pulp Fiction', here he gave both Pam Grier and Robert Forster a second Hollywood chance. Also 'Uncle Jack' from Breaking Bad'. 8/10.

It's only surprising he didn't give writer Elmore Leonard a cameo in it.

🍿

The Town, another South Boston gangster thriller (A-la 'The Departed' and 'Eddie Coyle', and 'Mystic River' and so many others) about a bank robber who falls in love with a bank teller after taking her hostage during a daring robbery. It's predictable, and you know exactly how it will end, just not sure about the twists along the way. But it's done nearly as well as Michael Mann's 'Heat', and Rebecca Hall is lovely in her role. 8/10.

🍿

2 musical shorts:

🍿 A short YouTube gem, Bach Adagio BWV 974, maybe Russian, about a garbageman who find a discarded piano. Unexplainable. 10/10.

🍿 Takrai (Repetition) is a mesmerizing experimental short about geometrical patterns of Islamic, Ottoman, Greek, and Byzantine architecture. It was made by Syrian-German filmmaker Waref Abu-Quba

🍿

“You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep…”

Asteroid city, the latest Wes Anderson world-building show-piece. Artistic, theatrical, quirky and super-stylized, it reminds me a bit of Roy Andersson's artificial universe (and in this particular movie, it's even closer to Tim Burton's 'Mars attacks'), but without the aching heart behind it. There were a few moments of genuine visual emotions (the green space ship with its long 'Salad Fingers' alien, the sudden Howdly-Dee happy dance, the prancing roadrunner over the end credits). 7/10.

🍿

"No story, and no plot!"

The Bell Boy, my first (?) by and with man-child Jerry Lewis. A series of unfunny gags, pointless pratfalls and him mugging to the camera. Absolutely not like Monsieur Hulot, or Chaplin's 'Tramp', even though it aspired to replicate them. 1/10.

🍿

2 by Australian Robert Luketic:

🍿 Titsiana Booberini was a quirky Australian short (12 min.) about a check-out supermarket girl who has a little mustache. It's kind of a comedy with some musical numbers thrown in. I didn't get it, but apparently its international success gave its director the opportunity to direct his first feature:

🍿 Legally blond, an empowering feminist chick flick, similar to 'Clueless', about a seemingly ditzy teen, who's hiding her smarts behind a pretty 'dumb blond' facade. Reese Witherspoon was great in it. 3/10.

🍿

“The best way to do well in the United States is to be born rich”

[Not a movie, but] "Welcome to my [Robert Reich's] final UC Berkeley course on Wealth and Poverty. [YT playlist, 14 lectures, ~1h30m each] Drawing on my 40+ years in politics, including my time as secretary of labor, I offer a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s in the United States, and why this poses dangerous risks to our society. Each class page has a link to a syllabus of notes and readings in the "more inside"

🍿  

(My complete movie list is here)

The Blue Sky Maiden (1957)

[lucyllawless]

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week #88

Glorious summer on the Côte d'Azur: La Piscine (The Swimming Pool), a 1969 psychological thriller, starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, and a very young Jane Birkin. A throwback to Delon’s breakthrough role as Tom Ripley in ‘Purple Noon’ 10 years earlier, where he also kills his same best friend Maurice Ronet in the Riviera’s sexy waters. First watch.

I loved Luca Guadagnino’s 2016 remake of this ‘A Bigger Splash’, with Dakota Johnson in the Jane Birkin role, but I find this original even more wistful and ambiguous. 7/10. (Photo Above).

🍿 

The Burglars, a 1971 crime noir starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. The genial opening scene with score by Ennio Morricone, and the initial part of a meticulous jewellery heist were very promising, but the movie quickly turn ridiculous. 60′s aesthetics of long car chases in Athens were not enough to offset the unfortunate story. The American version, where all the French and Italian spoke in Engrish, was jarring.

🍿 

First watch: Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1924 Michael, an early gay cinema classic. An unscrupulous young model exploits the love of his older benefactor, artist Benjamin Christensen. If it were to be remade today, Michael will surely be played by Timothée Chalamet.

🍿 

The Wild Pear Tree (2018) my 4th masterpiece by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, by now one of my all time favorite authors. Stunningly beautiful story about a young aspiring novelist who returns to his impoverished village. Highly recommended - 8/10.

🍿

I haven’t seen too many ballet movies, and even fewer films about transsexuals, but the Cannes-winner Belgian film Girl (2018) is the best of the lot in my mind. It’s an incredible story of a 15-year-old trans girl who pushes herself too hard to become a professional ballerina, while at the same time undergoing gender reassignment. Brilliant on every level, with one truly-shocking scene at the end. There was some push back at the androgynous male actor who played the young girl, but it was a very difficult role, and he deserved all the accolades he received. 9/10

🍿

2 by (new to me) Derek Cianfrance (who later wrote ‘Sound of Metal’) - both starring Ryan Gosling:

🍿 Sins are passed down through the generations from fathers to sons in the tragic, gripping story The place beyond the pines. It starts when laconic bad boy Gosling, who works as a Wall of Death stunt rider carnie, discovers that he has a 1-year-old son with a former fling. The story goes from there in various unexpected directions, and I don’t want to give out any spoilers, as this movie should be seen ‘cold’.

Star-studded, emotionally-charged and challenging narrative - The surprise discovery of the week!

🍿 In his sad Blue Valentine, hopelessly romantic Ryan Gosling falls for Michelle Williams, and after a life together as a family, they drift apart. Subtle, beautiful and heartbreaking. It also had some innovative end credits.

(All I have left of his is the period piece ‘The Light Between Oceans’, which received generally bad reviews). 

🍿

What do you get when you combine Erik Satie and Japanese soft-core from the ‘Roman Porno’ period of the 1970′s? Aroused by Gymnopedies (2016), a strange meta-film about film-making a-la ‘Boogie Nights’. It tells of a has-been art director with insatiable sexual apatite (and a comatose wife) who reaches a dead end in his career, financial and personal life, and now has to resort to directing very cheap porn flicks. While at the same time many young women around him still desire him and are willing to do anything for him. A depressing black comedy. 4/10.

🍿

Another womanizing arthouse director struggling with his behavior toward his female fans is Right Now, Wrong Then, my 9th by Hong Sang-soo. It’s brilliantly divided into two equal halves. The first part is similar to his other films: A famous “Director” meets the pretty Kim Min-hee by chance in a temple, invites her for coffee, then to Soju, and in the course of a day and night tries to seduce her by getting them both drunk. It doesn’t go well, and truthfully, that regular Sang-soo story line is getting banal and tiring, like a standard Woody Allen plot. But then, the whole first hour repeats itself from the beginning, a-la-Groundhog Day, and this time, he's honest with her, and their feelings for each other turn genuine and bittersweet. 7/10. 

🍿

I was looking forward to see the original Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, but actually did not enjoy it as much as I should have. Yes, it was cutesy, and going for the heartwarming, clever touch, but the one-trick gimmick would have been better if it stayed a much shorter piece. It went self-referential 'meta’ too quickly. 🍿

Ingrid Bergman X 2: 

🍿 George Cukor’s 1944’s Gaslight, the film from which the phrase 'gaslighting’ was derived. A cruel and duplicitous husband isolates and psychologically tortures his young wife by manipulating her to question her reality. An unpleasant and ugly story of misogyny and domestic abuse. Part of the 1940′s cycle of 'Don't Trust Your Husband' films. Also, the film debut of 17-year-old Angela Lansbury.

🍿 Ingrid Bergman’s last role in Ingmar Bergman’s last film (not television productions), Autumn Sonata. The tortured relationship between self-centered world-famous pianist and her unloved, neglected daughter is hard to re-watch. The affected story was acted like a stage play and Ingrid Bergman looked as if she was still playing Golda Meir. The dubbing of the acting into English was a criminal act - This process should be illegal, and punishable by castration!

🍿

Two men emerge from the sea onto the beach carrying a large wooden wardrobe with a mirror on its front in Roman Polański’s 1958 short silent film Two Men and a Wardrobe. 25-year-young Polanski himself plays (again!) one of the thugs.

🍿 

“Money is like Christ. It blesses you if you share it. Money enlightens those who use it to open the flower of the world and damn those that glorify it.”

Because I found Jodorowsky's The Dance of Reality (2013) so extraordinary last week, I had to watch it again. It still scores 10/10 in my book. The element of ‘Heart’ appears in it again and again, but what does it mean? 

🍿 

Tim Robinson X 2:

🍿 Laughing again with the absurd sketch comedy I Think You Should Leave. The humor is different, embarrassingly weird, awkward and sophomore: People behave badly, like a person who farts in a crowded elevator, and then blame it on others. The only immature running theme is scatological, and even though he is obsessed with ‘shit’, he keep calling them instead ‘mud pies’ and farts.

🍿 So I checked out his previous Comedy Central series, Detroiters, which he created together with buddy Sam Richardson (whom I will always remember as the TSA agent in ‘We’re The Millers’). It’s a combination of stupid ‘Mad Men’ in Detroit with the bromance of ‘Dumb and Dumber’. Same cringe-worthy toilet-obsessed humor as his later show, but more structured and less polished. 4/10.

🍿

The only bad injuns... Don Siegel’s western Flaming Star, considered today as one of Elvis Presley 'better’ Hollywood movie. Elvis plays a biracial hero, half-white and half-Kiowa-Indian, in a tragic story about race and prejudices of 1950s America.

Wikipedia Fun Fact: The Andy Warhol silkscreens made of the Elvis publicity shots from the movie generated $380 million dollars (!) when they were sold.

🍿

...They say i'm crazy, just a little bit out of whack, cuz they always like to act like me, now they call me a maniac...

The 1980 comedy Stir Crazy starts with a lovely song, sung by the lovable Gene Wilder, but quickly turns into an outdated, unfunny prison break yarn with a paper-thin plot. At least, Sidney Poitier who directed it, became the first black actor to earn a million dollars for a single film for it. 2/10.

🍿

Know thy enemy: 2,000 Mules is an election-denial agitprop piece about the 2020 ‘ballot harvesting‘, made on the cheap by convicted felon and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza. As I remove myself more and more from following American politics, this was a little look back to see what I am missing: Grift masked as political discourse. Terrible on every level. 1/10.

Don’t kink-shame: I also watched Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda spectacle ‘Triumph des Willens', to learn what the Nazis were seeing, when Hitler consolidated his power.

🍿

(My complete movie list is here)

[the-yearning-astronaut]

I don't know why your answer to my ask won't even let me comment back. But - yep, I hear ya. That's why I had to give up ever trying to be in Star Trek groups. They're so toxic against Discovery, much less Disco's canon status. I agree, they explained it perfectly how Disco is canon and Spock never told anyone about Michael, nor did anyone else ever speak of the spore drive and ship. I thought it was brilliant. And more than that, it is giving us Strange New Worlds. My fave trek from 1966 through Discovery was Disco S2 and Pike and Spock. I joined the voices that begged the franchise for Anson/Pike and Ethan/Spock to have their own series. I feel certain as soon as SNW premieres, it will quickly catapult to the top of my fave Treks list!

Ah, that might be due to my settings or something, sorry about that!

Back in 2018 when Discovery was just finishing up its first season I actually made a Star Trek Discord specifically for fans of AOS and Discovery because I was so tired of seeing the toxicity directed at the both of them. It's quiet now -- 2020 sorta stifled it I think. But it was a great little community.

I wasn't raised on Star Trek but AOS got me into not only the franchise but also astronomy and physics; the first two films were my comfort movies during college. Discovery is what brought me back into the fandom years later -- just in time for me to go back to college to finish a physics degree. Both are very dear to me and it's frustrating to see the way they're treated (and the way their fans are treated).

I absolutely adore Disco S2. Ethan Peck plays an amazing Spock and Anson Mount's Pike is certainly one of my favorite captains (tbf I have three captains and they're all my favs chdjc). I was certainly hoping for a spin off series before s2 had even finished airing lmao. I'm incredibly excited for Strange New Worlds and also apprehensive about how Star Trek 'fans' will treat it. I think how readily it's accepted as part of canon will say a lot about the fandom :/

Discovery itself has certainly found it's own footing in seasons 3 and 4, too! Now that it's unbound by that narrow space in the previously established timeline I think it's truly shining. The themes of both seasons have really hit home for me and I think they embody all Star Trek ideals in the best ways.

[frankendykes-monster]

@duel1971 sounded off in the replies so here we go~

Keep Watching The Skies!: American Science Fiction Movies of The Fifties has been an invaluable resource for me since late 2018 when I got back into this era of the genre, though I only just now got a physical copy of the two volume set. It's pretty exhaustive but its concept of what a "1950's" "American" film is a bit loose. Films that were produced in the 1950's but didn't come out until the 1960's are included, as are American edits of previously foreign films, which, okay, but it stretches the limits when including the 1962 release of Mothra (1961).

Trying to "figure out" Jack Cole lead to me to picking up Forms Stretched To Their Limits, a published adaptation of an article by Art Spiegelman for The New Yorker with layouts by Chip Kidd (truly...Spiegelman's finest work (sarcasm)). Where "critical study" and "celebration" and "photo book" and "reprint collection" begin and end is completely arbitrary with Forms, making it a bit hard to discuss or recommend. I will say that I was under the impression that Spiegelman didn't like superheroes so him writing a book about Plastic Man mostly was a surprise to me. Probably the most interesting thing is when reprinting full stories it switches from glossy magazine stock paper to newsprint, nice touch.

Kidd also did Shazam: The Golden Age of The World's Mightiest Mortal, which as far as I can tell is the only book that DC released to celebrate or promote Shazam (2019). It's mostly a huge photo reference book of merchandising and memorabilia surrounding Captain Marvel, which is a subject that had mostly been lost to time. Carmine Infantino had mention that comics companies have historically made the majority of their profits off of licensing rather than actual comics and yeah I can see it with all the stuff on display here.

Continuing with Cole, I also picked up some volumes of Yoe Books' Chilling Archives of Horror Comics, his and Dick Briefer's Frankenstein. Cole's volume is pretty exhaustive, collecting all of his horror comics from Web of Evil, which, he can draw some pretty disgusting caricatures ill say that at least. Briefer's volume is more of a highlight reel than anything with how thin it is, so the quest to read more of his Frankenstein shall continue...elsewhere...

I don't know what I was on a kick with 1950's horror comics but I've already mentioned Four Color Fear and The Horror! The Horror! here on Tumblr, both essential collections of material that wasn't published by EC, which gets all the attention with this genre in this decade.

Art Out of Time is one I was super excited about and it didn't disappoint, showcasing a ton of artists in comic strips and comics proper that did their job unconventionally. Some of the talent on display here (Dick Briefer, Fletcher Hanks, Ogden Whitney, etc.) aren't as "unknown" as they were in 2006 but plenty here still are; probably my favorite discovery so far is Gustave Verbeek and his comic strips that at first glance look like knockoff Winsor McCay stuff but reveal their oddities on closer inspection.

Finally we've got some Kirby and Ditko studies. Hand of Fire I'm not sure what I'm getting into yet, I just know Charles Hatfield sent out a public invite for anyone who wanted to contribute critical analysis of Kirby's work for a future book and my Devil Dinosaur proposal was rejected (the wounds are still fresh). I'm familiar with Chris Tolworthy's investigative work surrounding Kirby online so I was curious about The Lost Jack Kirby Stories; befitting a self-published work with little oversight, right now I'd say it's 50% legitimate uncovering and 50% conspiratorial nonsense that is just giving ammo to Lee sympathizers, but I digress. Mysterious Travellers is a political analysis of Ditko's entire body of work, I entirely grabbed it because I feel an obligation to grab all the stuff about Ditko published posthumously, of which we've totalled...three books in total now? Including Working With Ditko, discussing Ditko's overlooked time spent at DC in the 1970's.

Someone ask me about books I've recently gotten plz.

[blorbosondeck]

fic rec masterlist

canon divergent/finale fix its

Anamnesis

THIS! FIC! this fic lives in my head rent FREE it is so good and it makes so much sense in the narrative that the shitty finale concocted, as to why they wouldn't mention cas or anyone else and its just. so good and they write chuck in the most villainous way that i love!!!

"Chuck is depowered, Jack is the new god, and the world is free. Dean and Sam get into the Impala and chase down the miles on an endless highway, and their story is finally, finally their own to follow. At least, that's what Dean tells himself. But the diners and motels and painted interstate lines are blurring together and the smallest details keep catching at his brain like tiny fishhooks and he can't quite shake the feeling that not everything is exactly as it should be. Fix-it/alternate series finale. Canon-compliant through the end of 15.19."

Sunset Sound: Stairway to Heaven by @adhdeancas

GOD FUCKING CHRIST this is so good and sweet and im such a sucker for team ups and reunions!!! its 3:30 am rn and i just finished it and i love it SO much it made me laugh a lot and the last few chapters i had the stupidest grin just plastered to my face

The Closer the Star, the Greater the Parallax by @rocksalts​

repressed bastard dean submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known and receives the rewards of being loved but only after some miscommunication i LOVE this i read it last night and it’s a fast favorite. my interests have overlapped and i am INTO it

“When Dean sits down to watch some bullcrap Discovery Channel episode with Cas, he doesn’t expect to actually learn anything. Except, with Cas explaining, he makes an effort to connect the dots.”

Don't We All Deserve To Be Happy?

VERY sweet and a VERY good pick me up. all around feel good fic!!! 

"Post-canon fix-it, divergent from 15x19 where Jack stays and Dean doesn't die and Cas comes back and everyone is happy. Take a shot every time I'm salty about the finale."

Keep Your Love Alive

okay. okay okay okay this may be my favorite finale fix it just because of how well reasoned it is. like this feels what should have happened i love it SO much

"Dean gets to spend eternity sharing beers with Bobby on the Roadhouse porch and riding around in his Baby with Sam. He’s at peace… or he feels like he should be. But a few things nag at him: Where is Cas, and everybody else Dean had been hoping to see in Heaven? Why does he feel like he’s stuck in a loop, reliving the same memories over and over again? And who are the strangers wearing Sam’s and Bobby’s faces?"

The GoldenRod Revisions by @aethylas​

this is one of the most well written things ive ever read. the script format DID make it feel more real and honestly? this is better writing than this show deserves. the finale that could have been ♥️

“A rewrite of Supernatural’s final two episodes, expanded into a five episode arc - in which Chuck needs to be defeated, Castiel deserves to be saved, and the characters in this story get a very different ending.“

Ascend by @wanderingcas​ 

THEE finale fix it fic!!! written by the AMAZINGLY skilled and talented @wanderingcas !!! it’s 50k of angst and hurt/comfort and pure bliss

“Something in the world is wrong.

Demon activity is rising where mysterious black substance oozes and unusual ecological events are shaking the world. Dean, grief hanging on his shoulders, restlessly searches for answers that might lead him to the Empty… and to Cas.

But what Chuck wrote can’t be undone. The narrative thread pulls Dean along, forcing him to comply. Because once a story already has an ending, it can’t be rewritten.

Or can it?”

Things Happen (They Do, And They Do, And They Do) by THEE @sobsicles

i KNOW everyone has already recommended this and likely you’ve all already read it. but it has to go here bc REPRESSIOOOOOOOOON i LOVE this so much it is one of the most perfect things i’ve read. are you bisexual? did you have a kind of weird relationship with your best friend and not realize that how you felt about them wasn’t necessarily how other people felt about them and you were maybe a little bit in love with them but were too repressed to realize it? you’ll feel seen. maybe a little too seen

Closer (isn't close enough)

are you a sweet and sappy yet horny bastard? do you like cas exploding light bulbs? you will like this.

“the one where they finally talk about what cas said before the empty took him”

You and Your Husband

it is exTRMELY sweet!!! repression dean strikes again <3

"Five times Dean corrects someone about his relationship with Cas, and one time he realizes he doesn't need to."

Tall Grass

miscommunication and a slowburn! despite being written in 2017 and finished in 2018, it feels like a fix it. ft. plant obsessed cas <3 

Invictus

a LOVELY and short (relatively) finale fix it

“They saved the world. They're free. It's done.

Except it's not, and carrying on is the last thing any of them are thinking about.

They still have someone they need to save.”

Unchained Link

post finale- it’s a great case fic and i am compelled i want more!!!

"It's after the end of things. Life continues on while Dean is "livin it up" in heaven. But it's never that simple, is it? A freak occurrence sends Dean into another time stranded back on Earth. And he thought his hunting days were over. But, no worries. His knight in shining armor comes to the rescue. Hijinks, therefore, ensue."

fun and time unspecified

Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Love Potion No. 5

very funny and sweet! miscommunication at its finest ♥️

"Cas gets drenched with a mystery potion from the ‘love spell’ shelf and... Dean has a sneaking suspicion, angel or no— the spell may have taken effect. And Cas might be in love with Sam."

The Way We Were

Y'all. It is so good its a great mix of funny and serious- extremely fun to see dean as like a base bisexual

"Dean and Castiel pose as a couple to gain access to a gated community known as 'The Glen', a pleasant if secretive location that the boys believe might be linked to several dead bodies showing up over the years bearing signs of ritualistic sacrifice. All seems well until Dean's memory is affected from an incident during a solo exploration, leaving Dean convinced that their cover story is true. Castiel is left trying to resolve their case without taking advantage of an increasingly enthusiastic Dean"

While You Were Sleeping

this is basically just the movie but replacing sandra bullock with cas. this is my comfort movie and imo, one of the most perfect rom coms. the fic isn’t finished but i still have the tab open on my phone and i will straight up go back and re read it when i need a pick me up. 

aus/rewrites

The Harvelle Gospels: Offscript

i know everyone ever ( @jewishcharliebradbury ) has recommended this fic. and for good reason go fucking read it

“The Apocalypse is averted, the angels are in Heaven, and Jo is free from the threat of possession. Somehow it couldn't be farther from a happy ending.“

absolute riots

An Ineffably Profound Bond

i honestly would have put this in the finale fix it section! look. i know. i know you've been burned by crossover fics before. but this is Thee good omens/spn fic you want. its funny as hell and immensely satisfying. im weak for everyone working together tropes and that is this

"After Chuck sets 'The End' in motion, the remaining members of TFW make a miraculous escape. Not willing to waste any time, Castiel comes up with a plan to travel to one of the other worlds to try and get help from the angels there, but after a fight with Dean, it's the hunter who gets sent into an alternate universe,with seemingly no hope of return.

When a mysterious human with a heavenly weapon shows up in Aziraphale's shop, he and Crowley learn that their world is not the only one. Now it is up to them to decide whether or not they want to join forces with the human and help him save his world or simply find a way to send him home."

Somebody Up There Likes Me by @lafilleredige

cas is hit with a spell that turns his vessel into a woman, hijinks and sexuality crises ensue etc etc sam is a supportive and bitchy little brother and its all SO fucking funny and also. horny as hell i love it i love it i LOVE it

“’Dean doesn’t want to talk about your breasts, it’s making him uncomfortable because he hasn’t acknowledged the complex fluidity of human sexuality.’“

Stray Cat Strut

a long crack fic that IS one of the funniest things i’ve ever read and i can’t explain why. it’s so ooc but its so funny that i don’t care. if you need a laugh you gotta read this

"Sam and Cas are immediately in love with the adorable kitty they find outside the bunker door, and occupy their time planning how to convince Dean--who they believe is off sulking after a botched hunt--to let them keep their cat. Along the way, Dean learns to use a litter box and hears some confessions he maybe wasn’t supposed to hear, all while realizing just how much he loves Castiel.

Now all Dean has to do is convince Cas and Sam their new pet cat is actually him before they do something crazy--like neuter him!"

canon compliant or slight canon divergence

Give

by @doublestuffedimpala post season 7 episode 7, kind of ambiguous ending but truly a cas is happy to bleed for the winchesters fic

Punch Like Bones 

short, post 5x04 homoerotic moment that i wish we’d gotten

[sitp-recs]

Yesterday was @bixgirl1′s birthday and I wanted to do something special to celebrate her works since she’s one of my all-time favorite Drarry authors. I’ve read and loved in equal measure pretty much everything Bix has ever written - her unique ability to deliver complex, full-fleshed characters, intriguing plots, superb sexual tension, dirty hot smut and fantastic worldbuilding and dialogue - full of wit, angst, nuanced dilemmas and exquisite catharsis - never fails to take my breath away. More under the cut:

Every time I think I’ve got her style figured out she comes and murders me again with the raw, urgent apocalyptic atmosphere from In the Dark or those brilliant, creative and sensitive takes on tropes I probably wouldn’t read if not by her hand. Seeing a new fic by Bix is knowing that shit will hit you just right and haunt you for a while after you’re done. Everyone has their own favorite Bixgirl fic and I don’t know about you guys, but she’s probably the writer I revisit the most - even her long fics run by smoothly and are the best kind of comfort rereads.

On top of that she’s just the nicest person, always kind, friendly, welcoming and enthusiastic about the ship, about fic, about community. I love seeing her fun,  generous and uplifting comments on other people’s works. Sometimes I think she doesn’t fully realize how impactful her body of work is to the fandom, of how deeply appreciated she is, or of how lasting the feelings her writing awake in us are. This is a poorly rushed yet genuinely grateful tentative of shining light on some of my own favorites fics by her. It was so hard to select 10 12 works, but I think this list has a good mix of lengths and tropes. I encourage everyone to join this thread and add your personal favorites if they’re not here. Go on and read them, leave comments, spread love for these brilliant pieces and appreciation for this wonderful writer! 

Happy happy birthday Bix!! Thanks for sharing your talent and work with us, we are so lucky to have you <3

Hourglass Heart (2019, E, 5k)

It only happened once — depending on how Harry counted.

The Things They Never Say (2017, E, 9k)

Harry and Draco don't know how to talk. So they do other things instead.

Shining, Like a Present (2017, E, 13k)

The discovery of a small silver box at the site of a case opens up new possibilities.

freely, as men strive for right (2020, E, 17k)

How can Harry love a man like Draco Malfoy? If only Draco would let him count the ways.

White as Snow (2018, E, 19k)

After a quick escape from danger, Harry and Draco find themselves trapped in a blizzard, a small cabin their only refuge from the storm. It's the perfect place to recover and regroup — and to have a long-overdue conversation or two.

In the Red (2018, E, 45k)

When Harry goes looking for a vampire at a Creature club, the second-to-last thing Harry expects is to find Malfoy working there. The last thing he expects is to fall in love with him.

Life Lessons (2019, E, 68k)

On the cusp of a promotion, Harry needs a little help with his image. Enter Draco Malfoy — who doesn't really do that, Potter — to whip him into shape… and make him feel things he hasn't for a very long time.

That Old Black Magic (2019, E, 77k)

Centuries ago, marriage contracts were the norm — ready-made alliances between families, expected and complied with, without complaint. But norms have a way of changing, and when a long-dormant contract flares to life, Harry has to navigate an unexpected splintering of the path he'd thought would be easy after the war... with Draco Malfoy.

Balance, Imperfect (2017, E, 91k)

When Harry sustains an injury in the line of work, he no longer knows how to navigate the life he loved, and finds help and solace from the most unexpected source.

In the Dark (2020, E, WIP)

In the aftermath of an apocalypse, Harry receives an order to find and bring Draco Malfoy nearly a thousand miles, to the tenuous safety of Hogwarts. But more than distance separates them from their goal.

Bonus: my beloved rare pairs!

The Lies We Live With (2018, E, 5k) - Teddy/James Sirius

It doesn’t really count… is almost always followed by a lie, James learns, growing up.

The Mark of a Good Man (2019, E, 17k) - Draco/Albus Severus

After the life Draco Malfoy has lived, there aren’t many things capable of rendering him completely speechless, and he’s pleased to discover that even Albus Potter — writhing naked under the sheet of Draco’s bed and gasping face-down into Draco’s pillow — isn’t an exception to the rule.

[soundsof71]

FIVE ALBUMS YOU NEED IN YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW!!!

aka, My Top 5 of 2020, but I didn’t want to seem too retro!

Yep, I have a classic rock blog. Yep, I think that the best rock and roll in history is being made RIGHT NOW. And yep, ALL of it is being made by women. 

(Shown at top, Nova Twins by Ant Adams [x] and The Tissues by Michael Espleta [x]. I was planning to make a collage of all my faves in concert, but  not all of them were able to play in 2020. Both of these photos are pre-pandemic.)

There’s been quite a bit of movement on this list, and all five of these have spent some time at Number 1 as the year has done (gestures broadly) All This™. Anyone looking for rock and roll is going to dig any of these. 

Rocking out is just the start of it, though. Wrestling with my bipolarity and schizophrenia is tough on a good day, and there haven’t been too many of those lately. The plague has also taken its toll around me, with two family members dead and a third who’s doing better, but will likely never be all the way back. (Mask up, kids!)

I’ve written plenty about how deeply Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers have moved me this year (and will do so again), but in those rare stretches where I’ve had enough spare energy to listen to music at all these days, I’ve mostly been looking for more than beautiful music. Heavy times need heavy lifting, and I find that in heavy music. 

The five albums here have all helped carry me, pointing the way toward light.

1) BULLY, SUGAREGG

Alicia Bognanno is a force of nature as a guitarist, vocalist, composer, and producer/engineer. (While working on her degree in audio engineering at MTSU, she interned with Steve Albini, who remains both a fan and an admirer). A Nashville transplant from Minnesota, she’s still a natural fit in her home on Sub Pop: as heavy as Soundgarden, as hooky as Sleater-Kinney. 

I was blown away hearing her searing honesty while working through her discoveries of her bisexuality and bipolarity (double bi!), and her triumphant roar lifts me out of my seat every time I listen.

“She sings the hell out of [these songs], her voice fraying to the point of combustion every time she launches to the top of her range. This is phenomenal music for converting anger and anxiety into unbound joy.” ~Stereogum, Album of the Week

Also, check this fantastic interview with Alicia in the New York Times talking about what she’s gone through to get here. 

TURN IT UP!

2) GANSER, LOOK AT THAT SKY

Ganser syndrome is a rare dissociative disorder characterized by nonsensical or wrong answers to questions and other dissociative symptoms such as fugue, amnesia or conversion disorder, often with visual pseudohallucinations and a decreased state of consciousness. ~Wikipedia #it me

‘Just Look At That Sky’ doesn’t presume to offer solutions; it’s an honest document of what it feels like to wade through anxiety, day by day, not a survival guide or handbook of answers none of us actually have. Whether or not you pay attention to this, Ganser are simply one of the most invigorating, exciting new bands. ~Clashmusic

I saw one very positive review compare Ganser to a cross between Fugazi and Sonic Youth, but I think they hit much, much harder than either of those. And as you can surely guess, I also deeply relate to their themes of mental illness and dissociation while trying to make it through All This™. But my god, are they TIGHT. This is a BAND.

Ganser has two fantastic lead vocalists, and on “Bad Form”, bassist/vocalist Alicia Gaines wrote the song for the voice of keyboardist/vocalist Nadia Garofolo. Alicia also wrote a FANTASTIC essay on the strains that making an album during a pandemic puts on the mental health of the entire band at talkhouse: “Writing, recording, reaching out, balancing relationships outside and within the band, I found (and still find) myself under-rested and agitated to no particular end. More than not doing enough, I was not enough.” 

(If you can’t relate to that, I can’t relate to you, tbh.)

This video also does a fantastic job of showing dissociation. TURN IT UP!

3) THE TISSUES, BLUE FILM

“Blue Film” is a ten-song shot of dagger-twisting electro-(s)punk. It’s completely addictive from the very first listen. The tour de force is “Rear Window”, an art-punk masterpiece of slashing guitars and mad caterwauling. Copious doses of jaunty poetics and social commentary reward the earlooker patient enough to untangle Kristine Nevrose’s hysterical meowing about intergalactic salt shakers and hysterectomies, but I’m too emotionally invested to look under the hood.” ~ Sputnik Music

“Rear Window” is in fact my most-played 2020 track. TURN IT UP!

4) GUM COUNTRY, SOMEWHERE

It’s not all heavy! But even when I’m looking for something light and hooky, I need a bite, and Gum Country has done it with the kind of swirly, feeedback-laden wall of sound that Lush or Yo La Tengo would make if they lived in LA. (Recent transplants to SoCal from Vancouver, I do think that the sunshine has gone straight to their heads, in the very best way.)

Indie music nerds will know guitarist/composer/singer/front woman Courtney Garvin from The Courtneys, and she really does throw up a glorious wall of sound. I adore this video too! Sweet, swinging, fun -- and yes, the drummer is playing keyboard with one hand while slapping the skins with the other! 

I mentioned earlier that all five of these albums have spent part of the year at #1 on my list -- I think that this one might have spent the longest stretch there. Like all shoegaze, even as hooky as this, the truth of these songs is revealed in VOLUME. TURN IT UP!

5) NOVA TWINS, WHO ARE THE GIRLS?

Now, THIS is heavy! Amy Lee (vocals, guitar) and Georgia South (bass) are fucking LOUD, and insanely intense. A mix of grime, hip-hop, metal, punk, and good old rock and roll, they’re a harder-hitting, more theatrical Prodigy, with a pyre of intensity that recalls the heaviest howls of Rage Against The Machine. Indeed, Nova Twins spent a good bit of 2019 playing heavy metal festivals and toured as openers for Prophets of Rage. (Tom Morello has been a fan and supporter from the beginning.)

As you may have noted in the photo at the top of this post, their musical audacity extends to visuals too: they design their own clothes, hair, and makeup, they art direct their own videos, and more. They impress the hell out of me, and I’ve been a huge fan since hearing their first singles in 2018. I’ll plant a flag and say that Georgia South in particular is the most innovative musician on any instrument in any genre right now, but they’re both absolutely monsters. 

I’m honestly not at all sure that #5 is high enough for this, but I’m absolutely certain that after this video, you’re gonna need to rest for a little. LOL

“Taxi” is the story of two gleefully and creatively violent women shaking up the local crime syndicate as they use a vintage cab for their moving murder scene. This is the movie that Robert Rodriguez wishes he was making with Sin City, if it were combined with Blade Runner and The Matrix. And gangsters. And a snake.

I’m gonna take your crown I’m gonna, I’m gonna bleed you out We demand it by the hour We devour, control, power

I’m gonna burn it down Even the, even the royals bow

So not the same kind of therapeutic work being explored on this rekkid, but you know what? Fucking shit up is therapeutic too! 

Definitely take this full screen, and for the love of fuck, TURN IT UP!

SO. Not done with the best of 2020 yet? I’m sure not! A lot of my favorite songs aren’t on albums (at least not yet), so for an unedited list of everything I’m finding, check out my Spotify list, 2020: Shuffle This List! 268 songs and counting, over 15 hours, and not finished yet. I’m still checking out everyone else’s Best of lists (including yours! Message me links to yours!!!), so will probably be adding to this for most of 2021, too. 

And for more banging tracks by women from 2020, plus a few 2019 gems that I’m still grooving to, check out my more thoroughly curated Spotify playlist Women Bangers: A Tumblr New Classics Jam. (You’ll see a couple of these tracks there!) I’m working on a YouTube playlist and an essay to properly roll that one out. I’m also still tweaking the ending, but the three dozen or so tunes there are definitely bangin’.

Tell me if you hear anything you dig here, and tell me what YOU’VE found! We’re gonna get through this together.

Yr pal, Timmy

[a-shakespearean-in-paris]

I was in a toxic friendship

I want to preface this by saying I am so much happier right now and I am no longer friends with this person. Haven’t seen or heard from her in over a year. I also want to be clear this was a friendship I had in real life, not tumblr. I think however this story’s lessons can be applicable across the board to online friendships and even relationships with family members. Please, if you ever feel belittled by your “friends,” and you bring it up to them and they brush it aside and think you’re overreacting, it’s not a friendship. 

I was friends with this person, let’s call her Stacy, for about ten years before I realized I no longer wanted to speak to her or be her friend. I met her in the ninth grade and we bonded over Disney World and other things and I could talk to her about anything, including this huge crush I had on a twelfth grade boy. She came over to my house sometimes, though not a lot, and as high school wore on we started going to the mall together, stuff like that. I went to college in a different city and she came to visit me sometimes, and we even worked at the same theme park, though different departments. For all intents and purposes this was my best friend, though Stacey got upset when I also called my cousin my best friend, even though she spoke of her sister as her best friend.

She got a boyfriend when we were both around 21/22 or so, I think we were both juniors in college, though she took a semester off because she hated school and thought it was weird I was a double major. She told me her boyfriend was thirty and she met him at work. I thought the age gap was a little big, but I wasn’t one to judge. Later on I found out he was 36 and she told me she lied because she was worried how I would react. I met him and I thought he was nice, but when she got engaged when we were both around 23, I had only met him that one time for a birthday dinner she had, and my mom and dad told me they thought it was kind of strange. They also said it was weird to them whenever I hung out with Stacey it was only for like an hour, two at most, especially since my cousin and I could spend days and day together at sleepovers, chilling and being ourselves, interpretative dancing, lol. Privately I also found it odd I could talk to Stacey about anything, but when I asked questions about her life and her thoughts she’d barely talk. Her grandma passed away, she loved visiting my grandma because she could have one through me. One day I broke down and admitted my grandmother is a narcissist, and she is different behind closed doors. she berates me, used to call me fat, berated me. Stacey didn’t believe me. I can’t say when she started not being such a good presence in my life, but these were some seeds, and it got worse--slow at once and then all at once as they say.

Anyway, I was a bridesmaid of hers and her sister was the maid of honor--a mutual friend was another bridesmaid and there was one more (super sweet girl and I don’t even think Stacy talks with her much anymore either LMAO) and at this point in my life I was really into my first fanfic IWD. I was consumed with it, to put it bluntly. This is another story entirely but I spent so much of my college career as an English major writing for academia, and when I was finally writing something for me, I bloomed. I talked to her about it and she kind of laughed about this Cullen person but she liked to read fanfic herself so was whatever about me doing it. I shared with her my first piece of commissioned art and she laughed at Lydia thinking Lydia was just me, and I told her, no, she wasn’t, she’s based off of several old hollywood ladies and I actually made her avatar in game, but she wouldn’t believe it. I actually ended up saying “would you think this if I were white and she were white as well” and she laughed and didn’t understand. Needless to say the whole incident rubbed me the wrong way. I ignored it. Her wedding happened, her sister made a good speech, then when all the groomsmen did a speech for the groom the other Bridesmaids and I thought we had to do something, so we got up there and made an impromptu speech. I called her my sister and I told her I loved her. I didn’t know it then, but I didn’t believe her when she said “love you too.”

I wanted to go back to school, and I ended up in a Masters program after the wedding. My summer semester, my first, went well, starting in June and ending in July. I finished IWD and went to another fic, Stacey making fun of Sophie, my OC for that fic too, because I just straight up made her part Hawaiian like I am. When I told her I had little representation growing up other than like Lilo and Stitch and now Moana, (which I don’t like TBH but another story lol.) she asked me what the big deal was about that. Why did it matter that no main character ever looked as I looked? I couldn’t explain to her how much writing a character who was like me in a fanfic mattered. We planned on going to Disney World, me, her, her sister, and the other bridesmaid, but don’t post anything on facebook because she didn’t want to invite the other other bridesmaid. I wanted to go to a nightclub with her for my birthday but she didn’t want to go because her sister couldn’t enter, so after my whole family, plus her and her husband ate at my favorite restaurant, she went home even after I begged her to come with my and my cousin. She said it was stupid. Also, her husband was a huge ass to wait staff. Alarm bells went off for all of us.

But I was looking forward to Disney in December that year. (2018) I didn’t have a job at the time but was actively looking. Well, I got a job after interview after interview at restaurants that wouldn’t hire me, my dream job researching Shakespeare. It fell through. (I was promised to actively help the professor research, it fell through.) She paid for the trip without me knowing and I had to pay her back 800 dollars on writing commissions which I severely underpriced. because I was worried no one would pay otherwise. School wasn’t going well. Put it simply I felt really dumb and stupid and like I didn’t belong, (we were reading Ulysses!!!) which I later learned was a common sentiment with my classmates who began the same time as I. I will admit my relationship with academia is rocky at the moment, but I genuinely do love to write, love to research, love to make discoveries about new texts. Stacey saw how stressed I was and sad and got angry I was so sad, and asked why was I in school anyway Am I going to be on my deathbed and wished I studied harder? I didn’t have the energy to tell her it wasn’t about “studying harder,” it was that I loved writing and reading and wanted to be a part of academia. Learning makes me happy, expanding my mind. She belittled me anyway, thinking getting a Masters was dumb and I wouldn’t get a good job.

At Disney World I was so happy. I hadn’t been there since I was a child. She made fun of me for wanting to meet Ariel, for wanting to ride Soaring and being afraid to check grades when a classmate said they were up. I got so stressed I cried at the Japan pavilion at Epcot and stress ate sauerbraten at the Germany pavilion (Amazing by the way, I love German food.) She basically dictated the entire trip--we went to Universal for Harry Potter World at her request and refused to ride the spider man ride with me (it was fucking fun too-girl missed out.) All she wanted to do was stand around in Harry Potter world all day, (LOL now right?) I wasn’t that big of a Potter fan anymore, even at that point, and she told me I was going to stay there anyway and like it. She dictated the entire trip and when I questioned her about it she said I wasn’t listening to to her--we were following the agenda. Our last day there we went to a “Hawaiian” restaurant and made a comment about my “Hawaiian privileges.” I just didn’t have the heart to tell her that the crap we ate didn’t hold a candle to real Hawaiian luau food.

When we got back I was mentally drained and melancholic because I wondered why Stacey was so cruel to me. She always had a biting wit, but before it seemed playful. Now it was cruel, mocking. She made me feel so incredibly stupid. At this point my cousin got engaged and I cried because I wanted so badly to be in love with someone and get married. I was angry and I lashed out at people I shouldn’t have. I was later diagnosed as depressed. I felt like my life was at a standstill and matters with Stacey didn’t help. I also had a huge writing crisis--I told Stacey something I will always remember and always regret because she doesn’t deserve to know: I write the romances I want because no man wants me.  At this point, Stacy turned me into her project. She didn’t like how sad I was at Disney World, it put a bummer on her trip, and when I told her she seemed off she brushed it off. Her plan was to get me on dating apps and basically settle for anyone, even though I had used apps before and don’t like them, but when I got back on Bumble she basically patronized me and told me she was proud of me and “small steps.” On bumble, I wanted to vomit. (for the record, I am not against dating apps, I know success stories, but at that time I was not emotionally ready to date.) Also, she would teach me to drive so I could go on dates, but only in my Dad’s truck. 

I wish I could say I broke it off, that I told her not to talk to me again, but Stacey stopped talking to me first. However. the day she stopped was when I told her she was wrong and I wouldn’t listen to this anymore. What happened? I mentioned I was demisexual.  She said it wasn’t real. I said it was real to me--I don’t experience sexual attraction unless I have bonded with someone. Sure there are people I like to look at, but it’s not a sexual attraction. She asked about my crush on Tom Hiddleston, Cullen, “that robot guy” and was like yeah you’re sure demi, and lol it’s not real. It wasn’t just her words, it was the mocking indifference. 

I went off. I told her she didn’t have the right to tell me what was in my brain or how I felt. I knew who I was and who I am. I should have also told her I wasn’t her project, but I left her that day and it was the last time I saw her.

I talked to my dad that night and mentioned it to him, being demi, and you know what he told me? I think I’m the same way. I think I almost cried. 

I tried to talk to her again but she didn’t want to see me. She had “personal issues and was busy” I pissed her off. Good, I say now. But after this happened in March of 2019 I thought I had no friends. She was my only friend, and I lost another mutual friend (one we went to Disney with) because she knew Stacey longer than she knew me. But you know what happened in April? My cousin asked me to be her maid of honor and I fucking wept, because there was my best friend--my sister all along. Just because she lives in another city and we are growing up and it took me longer to figure out my career than her doesn’t change the fact that we have a bond that can’t be broken. My cousin is one of my favorite people and if you know her you love her--it is impossible not to. And when I told her about my fanfic and about being demi she wanted to know, wanted to listen. School got better too--I started chatting in class more and come to find out, one of my classmates also broke up with a toxic friend. God I love her and I miss her--wish I could see her. (thanks COVID) 

There was more, but this was a lot, and I spent more time writing this than I thought I would. I wanted to write it because seeing a few posts float around made me remember, and I want ya’ll to know, leaving a friendship is scary. Sometimes it can be worse than leaving a lover. But it is a brave thing to do. Part of me that knew I should have left at the first racist comment (oh yeah, she called me a pineapple one day before the Disney trip, did I mention it’s a slur for Hawaiian people? If my grandma were there she would have clobbed her.) but I stayed because I didn’t think I had any other friends. Well, I did and I do, and I know now friends lift each other up, not belittle or talk behind your back. They listen to me when I talk about how important my writing and my characters are to me. 

Sometimes I still miss her--but mostly the high school her that I knew before she met her husband. I don’t know if he changed her or this was her all along, perhaps both. I got fired from a job in November 2019 (which now I’d like to thank them because I got a better and more fulfilling job with a boss that respects me.) and when I cried outside the place, humiliated, I wanted to call her and vent like I used to. I didn’t. Now I don’t want to call her anymore or talk to her. I’d rather spend time with people who care, people who don’t kick me when I’m down. Since then I am so much stronger, in so many ways. The worst times in my life yielded the greatest lessons I have ever learned. 

If you made it this far, thank you. I did tear up a little writing this, but please know: it can be hard to walk a new path, but it is brave. You are brave. You don’t deserve to be belittled *hugs*

[girlsbtrs]

How Being a Woman in Hardcore Helped Me Learn to Love Myself

Written by Jen Moglia. Graphic by Laura Cross. 

Since this is my first piece written for Girls Behind the Rock Show, I figured that I should introduce myself; hi, my name is Jennifer, but most people call me Jen. I live on Long Island in New York, and my favorite things include my cats, the color pink, giving gifts to my Animal Crossing villagers, and watching sports. Above all else, however, I love music.

I frequently refer to music as the love of my life. It somehow plays a role in everything that I do. I got my first iPod when I was five years old, stacked with everything from Miranda Cosgrove and Avril Lavigne to Tool and Deftones. Some of my favorite memories growing up are sitting in my pink and purple bedroom singing and dancing along to Paramore’s crushcrushcrush and Fall Out Boy’s Thnks Fr Th Mmrs on the local alternative radio station. I danced for 12 years, played cello for seven, and am currently a wannabe ukulele rockstar after buying one on impulse and starting to teach myself how to play four years ago. Even on the simplest, barely noticeable levels, music has been everywhere in my life for as long as I can remember; even now, I can’t complete a basic task without a song playing in my headphones.

Music became an even bigger part of my life when I started attending live shows. I went to my first concerts at age 10, seeing my two favorite artists - Nickelodeon boy band Big Time Rush and classic progressive rock band Rush - within one month of each other. By the time I was 15, I had been to my fair share of arena/seated shows with one or both of my parents, from Fifth Harmony to Fitz and the Tantrums to Alice in Chains. My first general admission show was seeing the Foo Fighters at Citi Field with both my mom and dad when I was 12, but my first pop-punk general admission show (yes, they’re different) came a few years later. I had the typical list of favorite bands that you would expect from a young teenager getting into alternative music: Neck Deep, Knuckle Puck, Real Friends, and State Champs. 

In late 2018, I was able to see all four of these bands for the first time, and I am a firm believer that it changed the course of my life. I met, cried-during, and eventually got the setlist for Neck Deep at Stereo Garden on Long Island in September. I sang all of “Untitled” at the barricade for Knuckle Puck at SI Hall at the Fairgrounds in Syracuse in October. I had my first minor concussion scare (yay!) before Real Friends’ set at Irving Plaza in New York City in November. Finally, I crowd surfed for the first time during State Champs’ anniversary show for The Finer Things at House of Independents in Asbury Park in December. After just a few shows, I had fallen in love with this new brand of live music that I had just been introduced too. There was something so magical to me about skin covered in sweat and Sharpie marks, feet hurting from dancing in the pit all night, and meeting strangers on line outside the venue who would become your best friends and know your deepest secrets by the end of the night.

After making some friends at all of the pop-punk shows I was going to, they started to tell me that I should get into hardcore music. I was hesitant at first - the heaviest thing I had listened to at that point was nowhere near the snippets of hardcore that my friends had played for me - but, eventually, I decided to give it a chance. I was bored and home alone with nothing to do one night over the summer of 2019 when I listened to my first hardcore album, Laugh Tracks by Knocked Loose. Immediately, I got that gut feeling that you have when you know you’ve heard one of your favorite bands for the first time. I knew that this was something special that I was meant to find at this point in my life. For the rest of the summer, I worked my way through the rest of my friends’ hardcore and hardcore-adjacent recommendations, with Cost of Living by Incendiary, Stage Four by Touche Amore, You’re Not You Anymore by Counterparts, Time & Space by Turnstile, Springtime and Blind by Fiddlehead, Smile! Aren’t You Happy by Absence of Mine, Bad to my World by Backtrack, and Reality Approaches by Harms Way being some of my favorites. By the time the next school year started, I was hooked, and I already had tickets to my first few hardcore shows in the fall.

My first hardcore show was in November 2019, seeing Knocked Loose at Webster Hall in New York City - fitting, right? They were on tour supporting their new record A Different Shade of Blue, which I had become obsessed with the minute I heard it for the first time. Although I was ridiculously scared of getting stepped on and breaking all my bones (yes, that was an actual fear of mine), I had the time of my life at that show. There was something about this newer kind of live music that prompted a cathartic release, one that I hadn’t found anywhere else before. As soon as the show was over, I was counting the days until my next one.

My love for live hardcore music (and live music and hardcore music in general) has only grown since then, and that story sort of ends there. However, I want to go back to that first hardcore band that I listened to, Knocked Loose, and the album they put out that first summer that stole my heart. I was taken by storm as soon as the first notes of A Different Shade of Blue rang through my headphones, but something was different about the third track, A Serpent’s Touch, particularly the ending; I heard a voice that sounded a little bit more like my own.

This song features Emma Boster, who does vocals for one of my favorite hardcore bands right now, Dying Wish. When I heard A Serpent’s Touch for the first time, though, I had no idea who she was. I was used to the aggressive vocal delivery of frontmen in hardcore, particularly that of Knocked Loose’s Bryan Garris, but hearing it come from her changed my perspective on a lot of things. It’s not like the song was super angry and changed its tune to be lighter once the token girl came along; in her verse, Boster sings, “I watched the venom / Overcome your spirit / Jealousy holds you now / Distorting your appearance / Bleed out.” These were lyrics that held the same intensity that the lines screamed by the men held, and they sounded just as cool coming out of her mouth. As cheesy as it sounds, it had never even occurred to me that women had a place in this new world that I had discovered. The audiences in the live videos I watched (and eventually at the shows I attended) were made up of mostly men who looked bigger and older than me. When I did start going to shows, most of the non-man population consisted of my friends and I. Emma Boster, along with so many others, began to open my eyes to the fact that a place for people like me existed in this community. It didn’t matter that I had bright red hair or liked butterflies or wore pink - I was just as much a part of this magic as the men multiple feet taller than me with tattoo-covered arms, and I belonged there just as much as they did.

As time went on and I got more involved in the genre’s music and community, I discovered more bands with women in them, and it only fueled this fire of empowerment inside of me. When I felt insecure, I’d watch live sets from Krimewatch, a hardcore band from New York City, just half an hour away from my hometown. They have multiple women as members, including their energetic badass of a vocalist, Rhylli Ogiura. Year of the Knife became one of my all-time favorites, and their bassist Madison Watkins became a serious inspiration to me; the way that she can balance killing it on stage and running the cutest, most pink apparel brand I’ve ever seen (aptly titled Candy Corpse) amazes me. Even some of the bands I’ve found more recently have had an impact on me. I started listening to Initiate last year when their EP Lavender came out, and their beautifully colorful cover art caught my eye before I had heard any of their songs. Their vocalist, Crystal Pak, is also a woman, and she’s insanely talented. Discovering this kind of representation in this new universe that I had come to feel so at home in introduced me to a world of confidence and determination that I had never known before.

When people ask me why I love hardcore so much, I often give the easy answer; “the music sounds good.” If the person allows me to ramble on for a little longer, the answer becomes much more emotional and cheesy. Hardcore taught me that speaking up for what I believe in is important, and if there’s something I’m passionate about, it’s worth shouting about. I became familiar with this when listening to one of my favorite bands ever, Incendiary (the second hardcore band I ever checked out), before quickly realizing that politics are a pretty common topic within the genre - it’s what this music was practically built on. The first time I heard their vocalist Brendan Garrone singing about police brutality and injustice on songs like Force of Neglect and Sell Your Cause, I realized that there is so much more to music than just sounding good.

However, at its core, the thing I love so much about hardcore is what it taught me about being a woman. Growing up, I was the loud girl with the personality bigger than the room who always had something to say and had a never ending supply of excitement about just about everything. As I got older, I was taught that this was not okay. People didn’t like how enthusiastic I was about everything, or that I constantly had new ideas and new discoveries I wanted to talk about. As cliche as it sounds, I felt like everyone around me was trying to dull my sparkle, especially some of the men that I was encountering on a day-to-day basis. Even when I started to come to terms with my big and bright personality, in turn also coming to terms with my own femininity, I was told that this wasn’t how girls acted. I had to pick one - I could watch Disney princess movies and wear Hello Kitty hair clips, or I could be outspoken about my beliefs; but never both. The women that I mentioned earlier, along with so, so many more, helped me unlearn these toxic mindsets. Seeing someone like Emma Boster take the stage and scream ferociously for a full set helped me see that I could be a girl and still be a powerhouse. Following Madi Watkins around on social media showed me that I could love bands like Year of the Knife and also love heart-shaped purses and wear pink from head to toe. My aggression and passion didn’t make me any less of a woman, and my femininity didn’t make me any less of a force to be reckoned with. 

So, at the end of this love letter to hardcore and the women who run it, I say this; thank you for teaching me that I don’t have to shrink myself anymore. It has made a world of a difference.

[altair-native]

My Top 10 Albums of 2020

Now that the longest and craziest year in history is finally over, I figured now would be a good time to reflect and look back at some positive things from 2020. Despite concerts and tours being cancelled, and many bands and artists postponing albums due to not being able to promote them, there was a lot of really fantastic music released this year. Here are some of my favorites!

Honorable Mention: Money Money 2020 Part II by The Network

Green Day members Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool (plus some friends) brought back an old side project from 2003 this year called The Network. This album is a follow up to their debut album Money Money 2020, and was a huge surprise. I wasn’t sure where to put it on my top 10 list, but I still wanted to talk about it because it ended up being much better than the actual Green Day record we got this year. They experiment with lots of different sounds on this album, and while some of them are definitely meant to be satire, there are some seriously great songs on here that give me hope that future Green Day albums could be much better.

Favorite Song: Fentanyl

Now, on to the top 10:

#10 Last Room by waveform*

The first of many surprise additions to the list, Last Room is a really great album stocked full of songs that are all pretty short, but each stands out on its own. waveform* is really good at making songs that capture the listener’s attention. This is definitely a band that I want to hear more of, and I’m excited to dive deeper into their discography this year! 

Favorite Song: Miner’s Lullaby

   #9 Petals For Armor by Hayley Williams

After years of being in Paramore, Hayley Williams has finally released her first solo album! Paramore’s 2017 album After Laughter experimented with lots of different sounds, and was also a very personal record lyrically, so it’s no surprise that Hayley took a similar approach here. These songs are a way for her to open up about her life and branch out more and she succeeds on this record. Even if you’re not a fan of Paramore I highly recommend checking this one out.

Favorite Song: Why We Ever

   #8 Some Still Morning by Handsome Ghost

I’ve already talked a bit about this album (it was even my first review on this blog!) but I feel like the more I’ve listened to it, the more I’ve started to love the songs that first stuck out to me. I still feel like some of the songs sound a bit too similar, but when the duo branch out and try new things on this record, it’s some of their best work.

Favorite Song: Christmas In Jersey

   #7 Healer by Grouplove

Something that has always been true about Grouplove’s music is that it is insanely catchy, and this holds true with their newest record Healer. I’ve liked a lot of their music before, but for some reason this album connected with me on a way that their other music hasn’t. I feel like this album came out at the perfect time for me, because it has a lot of themes about growing up and dealing with the crazy world we live in. If you’ve never listened to Grouplove and want to check them out, I think that Healer is definitely a good starting place.

Favorite Song: Hail to the Queen

   #6 Folklore by Taylor Swift 

I’ve had a history of really disliking Taylor Swift’s music, especially her earlier albums. I guess for those it was due to overexposure, but with some of her more recent albums (especially 2013′s Red) I actually found there were certain songs I actually liked. Her albums as a whole, however, have always felt bogged down by their singles which often don’t sound like they fit with the rest of the album. When I heard she had announced an album coming out that night, I was very curious. After listening to it, Folklore fixed every issue I’ve had with her previous albums, and I love how she’s shifted her lyrics to focus on telling stories. I didn’t expect a Taylor Swift album to end up on my top 10 list for any year, but 2020 was definitely full of surprises!

Favorite Song: Seven

  #5 Possession by Joywave

I had discovered Joywave one day on YouTube by accident, and immediately wanted to hear more from them. Their songs are always so unique and creative, and after seeing them open up for Bastille in October 2019, I got really excited for their third album. They have incredible energy on stage, and that energy is reflected perfectly in their music, especially on this album. It was one of my most anticipated records of 2020, and it seriously lived up to the hype.

Favorite Song: Half Your Age

   #4 Figure by Into It. Over It

Yet another accidental discovery, Figure blew me away the first time I listened to it. I was immediately drawn in from the first track, and each song delivers something truly special. I had to listen to this album all the way through multiple times to really take it all in. I planned on doing a full review of it here, but felt I needed to look into the lyrics and the meanings behind the songs a little more to fully understand it. Now, Into It. Over It has been on repeat for a good chunk of the past couple months.  Evan Thomas Weiss is an incredible songwriter and really talented musician, and I seriously recommend checking out his music.

Favorite Song: Brushstrokes

   #3 Leave What’s Lost Behind by Colony House

Colony House are a band that I discovered a few years ago, and their first two albums quickly became favorites of mine.Their intriguing instrumentals along with Caleb Chapman’s powerful vocals make their music really fun to listen to, and like Joywave they put on a fantastic show even when they’re just the opening act. I had been looking forward to the follow up to 2017′s Only The Lonely, and this record definitely lived up to my expectations, even if I prefer the latter album a little more. There are definitely some incredible songs here, a few of which are among the best in Colony House’s discography.

Favorite Song: The Hope Inside

#2 Zeros by Declan McKenna

For whatever reason, I didn’t listen to this album when it first came out, but when I did eventually get around to listening to it I fell in love. Declan McKenna has always been a really great songwriter, but this album in particular shows just how talented the 22 year old singer is. Blending sounds from different eras of rock along with some more modern production, Zeros is an absolute masterpiece of an album.

Favorite Song: Twice Your Size

   #1 Dreamland by COIN

Even though Zeros got really close to taking the number one spot, my personal favorite of the year is still COIN’s third album Dreamland (not to be confused with the Glass Animals album of the same name also from 2020). COIN is a band that just keeps on getting better, and even after losing a member back in 2018, they’ve still managed to grow and improve their sound. Dreamland takes everything I’ve loved about COIN’s music and adds to it. If you haven’t listened to this album and are a fan of indie pop bands like Flor, Smallpools and Young the Giant, then you should definitely give this album a listen!

Favorite Song: Nobody’s Baby

   Thank you for checking out my list of my favorite albums from this past year! I’d love to know what you guys think and if we have any of the same albums on our list :)

[tozierrichard]

Reddie Fanfic Masterlist

the amazing works that have changed my life (also using this to organize myself)

tear it with your teeth by belby | 32.1k

"We could leave this place, Eddie," Richie says. "God, imagine that? Not having to live in this trash dump anymore. We could go wherever we wanted. A different place every night."

notes: reddie from ages 15-18. this one hurts (but it’s incredibly beautiful)

It's Not My Fault! by shanisafan | 92.7k

“I want to be there for you when things get hard just as I know you will be there for me. Ben wrote his poem by me talking about how much I think I’m not good enough for you.”

“Richie -“ Eddie squeezed the other boy’s hands.

“I’m serious Eddie. I’m not. I’m selfish to take someone off the market who is as great as you. So I want to thank you for everything. Here’s to you and whatever happens next.”

notes: read this for the characterization wow! perfect amount of fluff and angst

Lovesong Series by WaxAgent | 164.9k

They're all connected, sure, but nothing comes close to the iron bonds between Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak; they have their ups and their downs, but they always have each other. A look at their lives from leaving Derry to being dragged back by a promise than both of them had long forgotten.

notes: this work has not been updated since 2018 but it is incredibly amazing, mind blowing and i just wanna cry and talk about it with someone, please suffer with me

the years go by like days by georgiestauffenberg |121.9k

It’s Eddie he wants to get a hold of, though, and he does, tucking him under his arm, and ruffling his hair, making him laugh. He’s startled when Eddie looks at him with such happy, shining eyes. And, for a split-second, he’s tempted to kiss him right then, right there in front of everyone.

He wants to. Badly. He doesn’t.

He leans in, instead, and he smacks a loud, wet kiss to Eddie’s cheek, punctuating it with a “mwah!” He does it again and again. “I’m so proud of my little Eds Spagheds!”

“Get off me!” Eddie says, laughing and shoving him away, swatting at his hands.

AU. in the 27 years in-between, Richie and Eddie forget a lot, but they don't forget each other.

notes: THE reddie fic

in the heat of the summer (you're so different from the rest) by kaboomslang | 109.5k

There’s a heatwave in L.A., the first time Richie sees Eddie naked.

or

One very hot year in the life of two idiots in love, working shit out.

notes: the author’s Meticulous with a capital M. one of my favorite characterizations of richie! and the love confessions are lovely!!

not exactly where i need to be (and yet it seems so close) by varnes | 49.3k

Richie runs all the way to Eddie’s. He has a bike but he can’t remember, just now, where he put it. Everything feels real, feels — the gravel hurt his shoeless feet, his lungs burn when he gets tired, there’s a cut on his chin that aches a little. It feels real but things always felt real, with It.

You can’t trust how you feel or what you see. That’s the core of the terror of It. That everything is real and nothing is real and all of it can kill you.

Richie clambers up the drainage pipe and shoves open Eddie’s window. He’s afraid to look. He’s afraid of what It has prepared for him.

But it’s nothing. It’s just Eddie, small, young, cast still on his arm. He’s curled up on his side and is using the cast as the world’s worst pillow.

“Holy shitballs what the fucking shit,” breathes Richie, lunging forward to fling himself on top of Eddie’s sleeping form. “Don’t scream, don’t scream, hey — Eddie! Eddie, shut the fuck up, you’re going to wake your mom, it’s me! It’s me.”

---

OR: Richard Tozier goes to sleep on a plane in 2016, and wakes up in 1989.

notes: time travel AU, i’d sell my soul to the devil if it meant getting to read this for the first time again ahhhhh

as the ghost begins to bleed by ShowMeAHero | 208.3k

Richie refuses to let Eddie stay dead. When he says he'll do anything to get Eddie back, he means anything.

notes: THE canon fix-it au

maybe i’m breaking up with myself by Anonymous | 59.3k

Underneath Derry, Richie Tozier is caught in the Deadlights. At that moment, across the country in the thick summer heat of Los Angeles, Henley Tozier passes out cold.

Three minutes pass, and Eddie Kaspbrak is impaled through the chest. At that exact same time, Atticus Kaspbrak clutches at his stomach, where a knife-sharp inexplicable pain is blooming.

notes: eddie has a son and richie has a daughter. a fix-it & everyone lives au, with the CUTEST children the losers could have. love love love 

Skeleton Key to My Heart by Amuly | 31.2k

After they kill that fucking clown, Richie is left with a broken arm, a list of bad baseball comedy jokes, and one beautiful, dedicated nurse by the name of Eddie Kaspbrak. But then Richie's manager Steve rushes to his side, and Richie's seeing double as the two most important men in Richie's life square off to see who can Handle Richie Tozier's Shit the best. Which isn't a bad problem to have, in Richie's book--he just wishes they could figure out how to get along.

notes: i love the reddie dynamic in this. i enjoyed reading this so much!!!!

WIP 

currently reading these

Baby, I'm Counting On You by PuddingTown | 109.7k

When Richie Tozier breezes back into his hometown of Derry, Maine, he’s expecting to see familiar faces. Of course, he’s not expecting to see an old flame chasing around a baby. With a million questions, nowhere to go, and a help wanted ad for a nannying job, he finds himself at the doorstep of Eddie Kaspbrak.

notes: i’ve loved domestic reddie but it’s also angsty. this is (re)self-discovery by richie tozier

ribs by mikeshanlon | 93.9k

Almost every time the lights turn off and they cram in the shitty twin bed, Richie seems to become a different person. Maybe not different, per say, but the stupid jokes and teasing die down, the guard of nonchalance dropping. Eddie feels lucky to see this side of Richie, soft and caring-- vulnerable. It’s not like he hates the other side of Richie, he secretly enjoys their constant banter and his dumb jokes. No, it’s that this side is rare, and it’s something beautiful. Here, safe in the soft flannel sheets, it feels like they are the only two souls for miles, and they can be themselves, and that is terrifying and reassuring all at once.

“I’m gonna miss this. When we go off to college,” Richie admits, the weight behind his words telling Eddie he felt the same about their shared nights.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees softly, “Me too.”

notes: the losers’ senior year. this has made me laugh pretty hard and cry just as much. makes me nostalgic but in the best way. go give it the love it deserves

Running up that hill by speakslow | 59.6k

When Eddie Kaspbrak's mother gets remarried, she sends him off to Catholic boarding school. Will it be exactly what he pictures: same old prison, new location? Or will it be something else entirely?

my oh my god they were roommates story, loosely inspired by Dead Poets Society (but it's set in the fall of 1992)

notes: the last update was this past week so i read the entire thing again and oh my god let me hug everyone. all the losers are pretty prominent in this and i love that. lowkey enemies to friends to lovers?